Just Listen
Walter R. Niessen, P.E., B.C.E.E.
We are now in the early years of an explosion in the emergence of innovative MSW processing technologies. As in the past, it is partly driven by the shrinking availability and increasing cost and complexity of in-close landfills, by the projected increases in the value of energy (especially “green energy”) and by strategic concepts that seem “New” . . . gasification instead of incineration, plasma arcs instead of oxidation, and promising achievement of Zero Waste objectives by slagging residues.
Having lived through the first explosion, it seemed appropriate for me to share with the engineers, potential owner communities and process developers the experience that this engineer has had with the evaluation of emerging technologies. Perhaps it will help to guide thoughtful system development, suggest questions and methods for process assessment, and, ultimately, help the cities and counties considering such systems to make better decisions.
About the 2010 Lawrence Lecturer: Mr. Niessen, President of Niessen Consultants, is a Chemical Engineer with over 50 years experience in combustion and air pollution control. His career began at Arthur D. Little, BBN, and R.F. Weston leading to 22 years at CDM in Cambridge as a Senior Vice President. At ADL, he led EPA’s “System Study of Air Pollution from Municipal Incineration” where he explored the relationship of waste composition and heat and mass transfer processes to combustion and air emissions, equipment options, refractory, boiler corrosion and other issues of incineration systems. This work was the basis for the 1st edition of his book Combustion and Incineration Process, Applications in Environmental Engineering (now in its 4th edition) and led to his membership in 1968 in ASME’s “Incinerator Committee” the precursor of the Solid Waste Processing Division. He is also a member of AWMA, and AIChE and is a PE and Board Certified by the AAEE. At CDM, Walter expanded his scope to include combustion and air emission control for haz-waste and biosolids and continued to add contributions to the technical literature. He has over 95 papers and chapters in eight other texts. His venue includes work in Southeast Asia, Hong Kong, China and Taiwan, the Caribbean, Africa and Europe. While the focus of his work remains in the application of combustion technology, process analysis and other chemical engineering skills to solve environmental problems, he has also worked extensively as an expert witness and as a lecturer in schools and given short courses in the US, Europe and Asia. He prepared five courses on environmental technology for PDHengineers.com.
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